


what i'd stand to lose

by sunshowerst



Series: danny and rusty and no one else on earth [1]
Category: Ocean's Eleven Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: (takes place during the first movie's heist planning), :), Basically wrote a whole fill-in for after that night when rusty first sees tess in the first movie, Introspection, M/M, Sleep Deprivation, Stream of Consciousness, and realizes danny conned him too, tess is only mentioned a few times but you know how it goes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29012058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshowerst/pseuds/sunshowerst
Summary: Rusty is dead on his feet this far into planning the job, and Danny feels responsible for helping him out. With the first part, at least.-
Relationships: Danny Ocean/Rusty Ryan
Series: danny and rusty and no one else on earth [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2128335
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	what i'd stand to lose

**Author's Note:**

> just to say that this is my first danny and rusty fic so i'm still figuring out how i want to write them. if it's weird thats why its weird. enjoy

He notices it sooner than he notices the rainstorm approaching surely from the south, thunder rolling loud and ostentatious and very, very obvious. Noticeable.

Maybe because his eyes tend to linger on Rusty like they should not be doing, like he’s avoiding to attribute to one common denominator, especially now and after everything, but the sun revolves around him and Danny is just one guy. He hasn’t seen Rusty in a while, hadn’t been used to seeing him all the time; if Saul bought that one, so can Danny’s own head.

He notices Rusty’s slight, barely there tell as he watches closely, the plans Basher laid out in front of him, blue and white paper and ink and lines Danny didn’t care to study as closely and patiently as he always studied - as he now studied - Rusty’s face, and the glaring red sign telling him exactly what was wrong and how wrong it was.

He wasn’t chewing on anything, nothing edible, at least, the toothpick wedged at the corner of his mouth a stand-in, and he was pursing his lips like he only did when confused or playing something up, which was already enough. More than. If Danny was an amateur in this and ten years younger and had any doubt in his findings, even the whole of the room parting them, all the assurance he needs settles in the form of Rusty’s left (tattooed, his brain supplies, a reminder that he didn’t _know_ anything about the tattoo and he should have learned and _needed_ to know, as soon as possible) hand leaving its place between his forearm and side when crossed over his chest, and his finger glides over the map of right angles and alien looking numbers, and it _shakes_ -

Like Danny shakes his head, ever so slightly, to himself. Turns to Livingston so he can occupy his mind with something involved, unnecessarily detailed and just this side of annoying, so he can stop himself from grabbing Rusty by the arm and leading him out of there before he decides to leave, himself.

Livingston, bless him, delivers on all fronts, and Danny assures himself his smile isn’t fond but a front, and it’s enough as of now. He reaches blindly for his inner pocket where he knows three casino chips rest, first three they’re planning to rob since his coming back, like that was his big play in order to get this, and him, all back on board. And it worked out well, until a week into it when he admitted to Rusty, but not before being asked ( _you_ let it get this bad), that this was the second time he went behind Rusty’s back and to himself that this would be the last time he tries to lie to himself that he has actual options when it comes to Rusty.

The warehouse they’re all piled in now is just big enough for Danny to flit around and keep busy, check on Turk and his current doubtful approach to his management role, work out the misunderstanding Linus and Yen were frothing at the mouth over (and it was just as useless and unrelated to the general idea of this whole thing they were getting at, as one would expect) and only when Saul asks him to stop being so antsy and take himself for a walk is when he runs out of his already thinning resolve to let Rusty make his own decisions about his own self, even if it wasn’t the smartest thing to test their blurred out, jagged limits when it comes to things that aren’t cons and food truck orders and stale, hotel vending machine coffee that had the same aftertaste as siphoning diesel did.

“You two done here?” he asks, but more for Basher’s sakes, cause Rusty’s head snaps up like he just now remembered that this wasn’t just some crew and some crooks and some people that let him do his thing and cared to care for little else.

Like he knows what he’s guilty of before he can remember to be stubborn or even a little bit annoying to deal with, like he’s too tired even for that, Rusty stays quiet and shrugs, for Basher’s sakes, and it’s that bad, huh. 

(You let it get that bad.)

“Care to explain?”

The elevator smells of perfume you buy to show you have all the money to waste and none the personal drive to, and Rusty shrugs, again, for no one’s sakes. _What’s there to explain,_ or, _you know already_ or, _why are you acting weird?_

“When did-”

“Friday.”

Terrible, and he felt about the same, hearing that, for all the reasons he’ll pretend to forget and not know about for as much longer as he can last and not drive himself insane. Drive them both insane, or off a cliff.

“Are you-”

He shakes his head, and it could be the hideous fluorescent light in the elevator making him look so much more coarse and, affected, by the elements, by not being twenty anymore, by not sleeping for four days and only letting Danny notice it today, tonight. Which was another issue he’d deal with when Rusty’s brain doesn’t have the consistency of hospital brand jell-o mixed in with easy set concrete. Or something like that. And it's not like he ever slept much before, but Rusty’s hands never shook, unless he hadn’t been refusing to acknowledge his own humanity and indulge in something as lowly as an hour of uninterrupted sleep in over two days.

And it hadn’t happened in a while, not since they got back to it and at it or a while before that, maybe almost a decade, Danny isn’t the one to have a clean cut view of details. But this was a new old, and worrying him more than he let on, cause Rusty didn’t care to mention it to him. Even if Danny was on self-assigned trailing duty and a self-indulgent visit to Reuben until today, because Rusty had a phone and all of Danny’s numbers, and a hell of a reason to call.

They walk out the elevator and if Rusty is in any way surprised that they ended up in Danny’s room, he doesn’t let anything on. If he noticed, that is.

“You wanted to talk?”

Danny halts, and remembers that Rusty didn’t get pissed at the coddling cause he wasn’t aware he was about to be coddled. And this might get bad.

“I wanted you to sleep,” Danny says and turns around after it, to see Rusty’s face contort, and then fall again, behind his usual stone-faced expression when Danny was overstepping (after, only after prison, because Danny had nothing to overstep before it, no line was there to begin with).

Rusty laughs.

It _was_ that bad, then.

The air is tense and Rusty refuses to lie down so far, or even lean onto something, and Danny tries to gauge with as much precision as he can muster after two glasses of wine that kept him seated and sound through Livingston’s exhaustive master class in microprocessors, how many seconds it would take him to take the four and a half steps towards Rusty and spare him the concussion, if push comes to shove.

(Three seconds, maybe.)

“Well, if that is all,” Rusty begins and his tone of voice is just as dangerous as the steely set of his jaw, and he doesn’t intend to finish, given that he’s headed for the door and Danny reacts as if he wasn’t a misstep away from being cold shouldered for a week at least, at best. Miracle kind of best.

Rusty turns, and stares at him, openly livid, at the audacity, or the subversion of what they usually did when the other was pissed off, for a reason. Danny didn’t know if it was a good reason yet. Didn’t know, which was what troubled him and probably caused half of this, like he didn’t know about the tattoo, like he didn’t know that Rusty wasn’t sleeping at all till it smacked him in the face and called him an idiot. If Danny doesn’t talk, he might actually get smacked in the face.

“You should have called me. Told me what was up.”

Because if he learned anything from Basher, he learned that the best explosions are those that tear at the hinges, not the lock.

And Rusty looks like he could stand to kill him with just a word, a glare, a fire behind his eyes like Danny was all wrong and different and bad and ruining this, whatever this new and guarded, closed off thing was, that worked, sure, but felt like being Pyrrhus afterwards. Rusty looks like he’d have to lift a mountain’s worth of weight if he tries to shrug now. Rusty looks like he hates Danny, at least partially, at least something he did or keeps doing if not Danny himself, and Rusty never hated anyone. (Never had anyone to care for enough to hate them - he’s sure his brain was short-circuiting at this point, but he notes the thought regardless).

“Like I called you before the masks? Like I called you before you went off and- let go of my arm, Danny. I have two full buildings to memorize.”

Danny tightens his grip nearly enough to bruise, and a few suspenseful seconds of years later, Rusty sighs, all but deflates with that one breath, his eyes turned to the ceiling and toward a god he doesn’t believe in; all the anger he never could hold on to like it burned him more than he’d ever intended to burn anyone else with it leaving his features and him looking just as tired as he did in the elevator, even in this low of a light, even more from up close. Like he’d given away more than he would if this was any other day, or if he managed to catch an hour and a half of rest before Basher came along. Like he wanted to keep it from Danny, and that’s just where they’d wrestle on tightrope tonight. And Rusty was sleep deprived, which was an unfair advantage - but if Danny ever had any morals, he'd neither have eight figures in his bank account, nor Rusty, so.

“Why do you bring up,” Danny doesn’t finish the sentence and it reminds him, of how much he didn’t want Rusty to hate anything anywhere within a fifty mile radius of him, cause Rusty was this, and Rusty didn’t kill him just now, and that counts a roundtrip to infinity in their world, parallel to that of those who can’t get it, or stay anywhere near it. Anywhere near Danny, in the way Rusty took no effort to since the day they met, no matter how much they - she, loved him.

The masks. _Why do you bring up the masks, Rus,_ he thinks, again, to himself, and his throat constricts because he knows where this thread leads to if it unravels.

Rusty really looks at him for the first time in a while, the way he did whenever he’d intend to just know everything Danny had to say and assess if it was worth staying to hear all of it. He took the toothpick out his mouth and smiled to himself, and it looked resigned; just because Rusty couldn’t stay mad, it didn’t mean he couldn’t make July breeze chill Danny to the bone, and really, he should’ve realized earlier, sooner. Before.

He’s on thin ice and all he has to his name is a pickaxe and a will beating by his heart to drown only on his own terms.

There’s still a line untanned on his ring finger and that’s where Rusty’s eyes conclude their scanning.

“You made me into a wager for _that_ , Danny, with a nil for payout. And you didn’t tell me, I found it out.” He sighs again, and the world could wither from it, could strip bare Nevada of its sand, that exhale. “I know you care. But you can’t expect me to expect it.” _Or believe it,_ Danny hears it loud and clear in the pause after it. _Or, believe you._

He expected more silence. A shrug, a scowl, a stare hard enough to hit him over the head, brickwall them here till sunrise. Expected something dull, unrelated. But Rusty was tired, clear as day, and it was a wonder he hadn’t crumpled to the floor by now; Danny feels a tiny bit less bad about his bicep. He’s tired, and he’s clearly been dragging this along for long enough to decide it was Danny’s turn to haul.

Fair enough. More than.

At least he doesn’t look angry anymore. Or anything else as easily describable, for that matter. It’s almost two in the morning.

“Can I-” Danny starts, slowly, and Rusty’s reply, though a bit delayed, is in leaning on him with all of his weight, in letting Danny walk him to bed, rid him of his shoes and coat and guide his head to the heap of pillows on the side Danny didn’t sleep on, in how he slumps against Danny’s chest when he joins him, and relaxes.

Danny turns the lamp off and decides that his fingers need to get busy with combing through Rusty’s impeccably styled hair with practiced ease, a habit even. He hums appreciatively, and that is one thing he remembers, from this same issue a decade back. Some things he knows, about Rusty, and a lot of them will never change. Why bring a hammer anywhere near David.

His eyes adjust to the low light in his room enough to spot the tattoo again, black ink and bold strokes and angles and he wants to know, more than anything, because he can’t not know and it’s Rusty. He can’t ask, because he shouldn’t have to ask.

“I had to stay up to plan for if you leave in the middle of it first.”

That shakes him to the core, all of this a buildup - his trial, his served time, the heist, Tess, the fucking masks - for that sentence, the cadence to his voice when he said it, the implications, worse than anything he’d felt in a while, a long while. An accepted apology even though he never, never apologized, for any of it. And more. That one bit more, that sat and simmered in cool air like white tea Tess makes best and only when she’s mad at him. Danny heard in it, that Rusty would blame himself if any of the crew ended up stranded or burned. That he sees Danny as a wildcard and an undetermined variable and still keeps him in, cause it’s Danny.

It all hits him after that sole moment when he almost reflexively started to say, that he wouldn’t leave in the middle of anything, and above all, he wouldn’t leave _Rusty_ behind, in the middle of anything.

But he did both of those things. Did time for them, too. And this now, was all too similar to that, with the same main cast and the same odds stacked against them, only this time he conned Rusty into coming along as well, and his mouth dries up and tastes like prison felt, the first few days of the thousand to come. Gray and leaded and _deserved_.

“Rus,” he starts. But he can’t start one thing without ending the other, and he doesn’t think he can end it with Tess. Not in a way he’d have to, not in the way she should have, but couldn’t.

“It’s okay.”

And it’s only logical that Danny feels every bit of the world Rusty is carrying on his shoulders now that he’d fallen asleep on top of him, like he has any reason to trust Danny right now. 

Like he doesn't care, knowing he doesn't.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos/comments/critique always welcome


End file.
